New survey challenges the myths about consumer email relevancy

Each year, the UK's DMA, fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx produce the Email Tracking Report, covering email attitudes and email-related behaviours among consumers.

The 2013 survey results challenge a few myths about consumer inboxes. For example, of those signed up to at least some mail from brands, almost half of consumers (48%) get less than three a day on average.

Below the report's infographic from the DMA I will look at some specific charts around email relevancy, which have some surprises! I wrote the summary and commentary for the survey so I can recommend some of the most useful data points.

How relevant are marketing emails?

One of the many messages of the report is that consumers distinguish between "marketing mails" in general and the marketing mails they actually get. Putting it simplistically, ask people if they like emails…

Bridge the gap in your content marketing

A recent Financial Services Content Marketing survey for the UK found that although over 80 per cent of respondents believe content marketing will be more important over the next 12 months, yet only 41 per cent have a strategy. Research on B2B Content Marketers' use of Content Marketing from the Content Marketing Institute in the United States shows a similar situation with a large proportion not having a documented content marketing strategy:

So, what is required for a successful content marketing strategy? Here are my rules to bridge that gap:

5 Content Marketing Rules

1. It’s not just a tick-box exercise

There’s more to content marketing than just churning out content via every available channel – from Twitter to Pinterest. The greatest ROI comes from mapping a funnel of engagement and taking a customer or prospect on a journey. You need…

A review of Chad White's new book and recommendations from his webcast

Chad White's new Email Marketing Rules gives a great toolkit to help marketers systematically review all aspects of their email programmes. I love its simplicity, with focused advice given throughout using short tips covering all the key issues that matter in Email Marketing. Altogether there are over 100 Rules or key best practices that can be easily reviewed. The Rules are grouped within different areas that matter to performance from the fundamentals like Permission, List-building and Deliverability into best practice guidance on content, design and targeting plus more advanced topics like behavioural emails. This slide deck from our recent webcast examples some of the main best practices we covered: In the webcast, Chad used examples to show how to improve all aspects of email marketing from Welcome Emails through Defensive Design and Enewsletters to…

Should you run competitions on your Facebook Timeline?

On October 24th, Richard Jones, CEO of EngageSciences, will give a talk at Social Media Marketing 2013 (London) on ‘What's Really Behind Facebook's Competition Rule Changes?’ To explain the opportunity and to get you in the mood, I’m offering my own take on how and when you should make use of Timeline competitions and when you should steer well clear. The change was first alerted to Smart Insights readers in Rhian Simm's post on Facebook's new competition rules on 29th August 2013 - so it's a relatively new issue.

Facebook Rule changes

First of all, let’s be clear on what the Facebook rule changes actually are. For the past two years it’s been against Facebook rules to run a competition directly on a Facebook Page and all Facebook competitions have needed to be managed through a third party app –…

How B2B companies are using content marketing to drive engagement, trust and transaction

In my recent post on making the case for inbound marketing, I talked about how the need for information has led to the emergence of new approaches to the promotion of credibility and experience through content marketing. Interest in content marketing shows no signs of abating, but many companies still seem to find it difficult to review the impact. In a recent B2B content marketing benchmark survey, B2B Marketing found that although 56% of respondents saw content marketing as having an impact on sales, there were more concerning undertones: 15% saw little or no increase whilst 29% simply could not quantify the impact of content marketing on their business 46% found demonstrating content marketing return on investment a key challenge Finding good relevant B2B examples online often proves challenging because although everyone is talking about doing it, there are hardly any examples…

Ideya's new report shows the why, what and how of selecting social listening tools

Investment in social media monitoring (SMM) requires careful consideration since it is a long-term and potentially costly commitment. Understanding of the key SMM concepts, benefits and possible applications is of utmost importance. In order to realize the long-term value of SMM, SMM needs to become part of the business strategy and well-integrated with the business processes.

Only by having a clear understanding of how SMM supports your business, you can transition from experimental, tactical to a more strategic use of SMM.

There are many social media monitoring and management tools on the market and making an educated choice about which SMM tools can best address company's needs and justify social media investment, has become a challenging task for organizations as social media technology business has branched out into a diverse set of technologies, data types and countless vendors confusing…

How is Amnesty using social media for campaigning?

To coincide with this week's new Guide on the social media for charities, we thought we would take a look at these examples of how Amnesty International are using social across the main platforms Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. Of course, Amnesty have been enthusiastic adopters of digital media and social media for campaigning from the outset, and need to manage many presence around the world, so they're an interesting case. For each network we have pulled out some examples of good practices for positioning a Not-for-profit on its page, status updates and encouraging interaction and action. As an international organisation, Amnesty also have the challenge of managing a different presence in different countries, so we will use a few different examples although this doesn’t illustrate the integration across channels which they seem to manage well within an individual region.

Facebook

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Reviewing SMS options and how to optimise them

Given the extraordinary penetration of mobile phones, it is unsurprising that short message service (SMS) would be an impactful marketing medium. Nonetheless, the statistics make for mighty impressive reading. 98% of text messages are read, with the average response time a mere 90 seconds (compared to 2.5 days for an email). 75% of people prefer receiving ads via SMS and 70% of Americans would like to receive mobile coupons from their favourite businesses, with SMS coupons more likely to be redeemed and shared than mail or newspaper coupons. Furthermore, SMS marketing campaigns are opted out less than 5% of the time. So how can SMS fit into your marketing efforts? Holly Barber, Marketing Manager at FireText, outlines some of the main ways in which SMS marketing can be used across a range of businesses.

SMS marketing strategy tips

Fill in the gaps – Barber says: 'If you…

A common buzzword, but what's involved in practice?

I recall that years ago, customers and prospects were often categorised in a simpler way than today. For example, they were simply assigned as a 'warm/hot prospect’ due to a recent contact or purchase,  ranked by a geo-demographic coding to living in a particular postcode, or simply having an affiliation to the product. 

Today (and for some time) we talk about the 360 degree customer view, but what does this mean in practice? We like the infographic since it suggests what we should aim for, it showcases resources, technology and data. 

As we all know, it’s more sophisticated and can be more complicated but worth the effort. Companies have access to new technology, sophisticated systems which can integrate data and access to more customer insight through ‘big data’. It’s focusing on the customer experience and realizing…

How European marketers are applying data-driven marketing

Value/Importance: ★★★ Recommended link: Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013 Europe and Infographic on key findings We are alerting you to the new report by Teradata, who partnered with The Technical University of Munich and the University of Applied management,  to survey over 1000 Senior Marketeers across 19 European countries to find out their biggest challenges, how to address them and adoption of technologies. Findings delved into the use of technology into today's multi-channel environment, tools to improve ROI and performance and acquiring budget. Sound familiar? ".. the tough economic climate is putting marketers under severe pressure to directly increase the revenue of the overall business and to justify their success by applying strict return on investment (ROI) measures" The findings will be of interest to Marketers who are in similar positions and being asked…